Author: Wil

I’m sort of a baseball geek. I read the Baseball Prospectus every year, Rob Neyer is one of my favorite sportswriters of all time, and I positively HATE Paul DePodesta for Kevin Malone-ing my Dodgers.
Okay, so the last one has more to do with being a life-long Dodger fan, and less to do with stats . . . unless you believe, as I do, that pitching wins in the baseball playoffs the same way goaltending wins in hockey playoffs.
But anyway, the whole point of this post is to share a cool item, brought to us by my Baseball Page-A-Day calendar:

On this date, in 1911, Grover Cleveland Alexander, who was a rookie at the time and playing for the Phillies, outlasted Cy Young, who was playing for the Braves. The final score was 1-0.

So that’s cool and all, because Alexander went on to 373 career victories . . . but Cy Young, who held his own against the rookie, was forty-four.
I say that, in their honor, we re-raise the mound, eliminate the DH, and tell the crybabies players who wear body armor that if they’re going to crowd the plate, they may just get brushed back.

On Friday night, I watched the DVD of Goodfellas. It’s as good as I remember it.
On Saturday, Anne and the kids went down to her friend’s house at the beach, and I met up with several of my friends from ACME, including Shane, (who you should be reading if you’re not already) and went to Canter’s Deli in the Fairfax district. Canter’s is a true Los Angeles institution, where hipsters routinely share the room with octogenarians, and you’re just as likely to get cussed out by the 70 year-old waitress as you are to get patted on the head and called “honey.” It’s rad. Saturday night I played poker for about 3 hours. I’m saving the details for a cool poker story . . . but oh my god. I’m back on my game, and it feels good!
On Sunday, Anne and the kids came home fairly early. We dropped them at the movies, and ran tons of errands while we were “kid-free.” For dinner on Sunday night, I made Beercan Chicken on my grill, which is usually really good, but this time something went horribly wrong, and when I opened the grill to turn the bird around, there was fire shooting out its ass, and smoke shooting out its head! I figure that there was a lot of fat on the bird that caught fire as it was dripping off. The whole skin got charred, and popped off in one piece when I touched it (think the Turkey in Christmas Vacation) but the chicken itself was incredibly good. Nolan declared that it was the “best chicken ever.”
Yesterday, my parents invited us up to their house for an end of summer barbeque, and swimming. It was the first time all summer I went in their pool, which is really kind of sad. We played swimming pool wiffle ball, and had our first and last family dinner of the summer.
It was over 100 all weekend, but we finally have air conditioning! I got one of those wireless thermometers, so I can see what the outside temperature is compared to the inside, and I loved seeing OUTSIDE: 104 INSIDE: 79
Ryan started school today. Holy crap. I’m the parent of a 10th grader.

Okay, so it’s not quite April 5, 2063 just yet, but . . .

LONDON (Reuters) – An unexplained radio signal from deep space could — just might be — contact from an alien civilization, New Scientist magazine reported on Thursday.
The signal, coming from a point between the Pisces and Aries
constellations, has been picked up three times by a telescope in Puerto Rico.
New Scientist said the signal could be generated by a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon or even be a by-product from the telescope itself.
But the mystery beam has excited astronomers across the world.
“If they can see it four, five or six times it really begins to get
exciting,” Jocelyn Bell Burnell of the University of Bath in western
England told the magazine.
It was broadcast on the main frequency at which the universe’s most common element, hydrogen, absorbs and emits energy, and which astronomers say is the most likely means by which aliens would advertise their presence.
The potentially extraterrestrial signals were picked up through the
SETI@home project, which uses programs running as screensavers on millions of personal computers worldwide to sift through the huge amount of data picked up by the telescope.

Linky
My whole life, I have hoped that we would look to the stars, and find undeniable proof that we are not alone in the universe. Could this be it?
Update: Aw, dammit. As synchronicity points out in comments, probably not:

A recent (September 1) article in New Scientist magazine, entitled ? Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away,? implies that the UC Berkeley SETI@home project has uncovered a very convincing candidate signal that might be the first strong evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Alas, this story is misleading. According to Dan Werthimer, who heads up the UC Berkeley SERENDIP SETI project, this is a case of a reporter failing to understand the workings of their search. He says that misquotes and statements taken out of context give the impression that his team is exceptionally impressed with one of the many candidate signals, SHGb02+14a, uncovered using the popular SETI@home software. They are not.

Well, I still say we are not alone. So there. Nyah.

Yesterday afternoon, I worked with Rod Roddenberry (Gene’s son) at my favorite pub in the world, which just happens to be in Old Town Pasadena. Rod is shooting a documentary called “Trek Nation,” that was originally about how Star Trek has positively impacted all sorts of people all over the world . . . but has become, he told me, about a son’s efforts to understand his father, and grok his father’s legacy. He’s got an incredible story to tell, and I am really happy that I got to be part of it.
Even though we both worked on TNG (he was a PA one summer, and I was, well, Wesley), and we’re about the same age, we never actually sat down and talked about anything important — or got to know each other — until last night. It’s good that we didn’t meet earlier in our lives, because from about 17 to 21, I was too busy being A Really Big Asshole™ to get to know him, anyway. It was really cool to compare our memories of Gene, and the diferences — and similarities — in our relationship with him.
We had an incredible conversation, that I’d love to recount here, but that would sort of steal Rod’s thunder, wouldn’t it? When the documentary is released, I think it will be of great interest to WWdN readers, even (especially?) those of you who are not Star Trek fans.

When I drive from Pasadena, I can get to Hollywood three different ways: 1) down the 2 and through Echo Park to the 101, 2) down the 2 and through Silver Lake to Beverly, 3) out the 134, over Barham, and down the 101 to Highland.
Of course, when I take the Metro, it’s significantly easier: park at Del Mar Station, relax, and change trains once at Union Station . . . but since I was running late, I chose to drive route 3.
As I headed over the Cahuenga pass, I noticed a greater-than-usual number of busses with “SHUTTLE” or “HOLLYWOOD BOWL” or “PARKING LOT x” on them. I was so focused on getting to Jimmy’s Dinner, though, even if one of them had said, “HEY, WIL! THERE’S A CONCERT AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL, SO YOU SHOULD STAY ON THE FREEWAY UNTIL GOWER” I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Luckily, some little voice in the back of my head said, “Excuse me, Wil? There’s a lot of traffic up there. You’d better go down to Gower to avoid it.” And I listened. If I’d gone straight, I would have been stuck in at least 45 minutes of crap, but I made it to Hollywood and Highland in under 5 minutes, without resorting to creative driving. Yes, I was very proud of myself.
I pulled into the Valet line at 7:50, and began to panic. I was supposed to arrive at 8, and I was going to have to run through the hotel as it was . . . so when the valet told me that I had to park in a far-away garage, I freaked.
“Dude! I have to speak in ten minutes, and I’m totally late, and you HAVE to park my car! PLEASE!”
“Well, I don’t know if –”
“I’m begging you, man!”
I waved a fiver at him, and he capitulated. I must admit, I felt like Mini Henry Hill for a second.
I walked into the cavernous lobby of the Hollywood Renaissance hotel, and looked for signs that would direct me to Jimmy’s Farewell Dinner. Finding none, I called a friend of mine who was already at the dinner, and asked him where it was. “On the fifth floor,” he said.
“Oh, that should be easy. I’ll just get into the elevator and . . . “
I’m not going to tell you how I got lost, because it’s incredibly embarassing, so let’s just fast forward about fifteen minutes, okay?
I walked into the ballroom, and marveled at the crowd: over 600 people filled the enormous room, and it took me several minutes to find my friend Harry. I had also misunderstood the schedule: I wasn’t on until around 9:15, so I had time to eat some dinner and visit with a few people.
Just before 9, the lights went down, and a woman got up to play an incredibly beautiful Star Trek suite on the oboe. Then Marc Lee took the stage, and started the show. The mood was not as somber as I thought it would be, and I laughed so hard my stomach hurt when Walter Koenig took over the hosting duties, and told stories about Jimmy and himself. I’ve heard for years about how funny Walter is, and I know both of his kids, who are incredily funny people . . . but I’d never actually seen Walter in action. Goddamn, man, he’s hilarious.
I got major butterflies when Walter called me up. I was only cast member from The Next Generation in attendance, and I wanted to represent my cast honorably.
My remarks went well. I had the audience on my side the entire time I spoke, and when I was done, I was so relieved that I didn’t suck . . . I walked right back to the wrong table. Of course, everyone was still watching me, so I got a bonus (and unintentional) laugh. Nice.
Nichelle spoke after me, and she was fantastic. She looked very beautiful and . . . well, imagine that Storm from XMEN (the comic, not the movie) was in her 60s. That’s how she looked. Her remarks were brilliant, and when she introduced Neil Armstrong . . . holy crap, man. The whole ballroom exploded! He gave a great speech, where he said that none of the rockets he rode were as advanced as the Enterprise, because they couldn’t even get out of the solar system. Like everyone else there, he’d been inspired by Jimmy’s work on Star Trek, and he thanked him for being Scotty.
And that was really the theme for the entire evening: all these people were there because they’d been touched by Jimmy’s work, or they’d been lucky enough to know him. I hope that when I am an old man, I am thought of half as fondly as Jimmy is.
Over the years, I’ve had a few moments when I’ve been able to “touch” how influential Star Trek is, but nothing has ever been like this night. I’m honored that I got to be a part of both.